Michigan

Hoop-ing it up: Ferrell stars in 'Semi-Pro'

Gold platform boots, a white polyester turtleneck and an ersatz-Afro straight out of Barbra Streisand's A STAR IS BORN: These are the hallmarks of the Jackie Moon look. Granted, it's 1976 and -- given the warped fashion sense of the times -- everybody looks somewhat ridiculous, but Jackie stands out nevertheless.

Why shouldn't he? In Flint, he's a celebrity: He's not just the owner of the Flint Tropics basketball team, he's the power forward, too.

As SEMI-PRO tells the bittersweet (and fictional) story of Jackie and the Tropics, it also permits Will Ferrell to once again skewer the '70s, as he did so memorably in ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY. ANCHORMAN showed the Have a Nice Day decade from the perspective of trend-chasing Southern Californians; SEMI-PRO looks at it from the Midwestern working-class point of view, which means the leisure suits are even louder, fondue recipes include cottage cheese as a key ingredient, and Free Corn Dog Night at the stadium is an event no one wants to miss.

Jackie's mission is to propel the Tropics into the National Basketball Association; if he fails, the team is history. For assistance, Jackie recruits Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson) as the coach, even though Monix's personal history is every bit as spotty as the Tropics' record.

"This isn't just a basketball team -- it's a lifestyle!" Jackie tells his players. It is not, however, a lifestyle of the rich and famous: It's closer to the lifestyles of the lower-middle-class and semi-obscure.

In many ways, the likable SEMI-PRO -- the title seems to be paying tribute to Burt Reynolds' 1977 football comedy SEMI-TOUGH -- repeats the formula of Ferrell's TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY and BLADES OF GLORY, in which dim bulbs eventually get their chance to shine, thanks to a combination of perseverance, cunning and good old-fashioned luck. The movie certainly doesn't pass up any opportunity to score cheap laughs with Jackie's absurd promotional stunts, such as incorporating a little bear wrestling into a Tropics game or giving away a $10,000 check that's sure to bounce all the way to Petoskey.

But director Kent Alterman doesn't allow the silliness to become mean-spirited. Although Jackie and his teammates may be walking jokes, when you take away their tendency to humiliate themselves in public they're not too far removed from the characters in HOOSIERS or WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP: They know that what happens on the court will determine their futures.

Beneath its crude language and frequent swipes at the residents of Flint, SEMI-PRO turns out to have a surprisingly sentimental heart. Screenwriter Scot Armstrong recognizes that when times are bad, many people look for distraction wherever they can find it, whether it's in the local disco (where Jackie's Barry White-inspired "Love Me Sexy" plays on and on, years after it dropped out of the charts) or in the bleachers, cheering on the enthusiastic but awkward Tropics.